Economy
The township (and inlaid Shamokin Dam) is home to most of Snyder County's commercial activity and serves as the location for nearly all of the county's national-chain retail outlets, hotels, and restaurants. The Susquehanna Valley Mall is in Monroe Township. The most recent addition is Monroe Marketplace, a collection of department stores and restaurants which was developed on farmland and the site of a former church camp along U.S. Routes 11 & 15. It was fully completed in 2009. Nearly every major "Big Box" retail format (e.g. home improvement, general merchandise, grocery, department store, and consumer electronics) has a presence in the township.
U.S. Routes 11 & 15 combine at the township's north end and continue southward through the township in a combined fashion. The highway is a major travel artery through the region. Day time flow is constant (truck and vehicle) with very heavy loads and serious backups on Fridays and holiday weekends. A thruway project has been in the works to allow traffic to bypass the congested commercial area, with only a portion (that which bypasses Selinsgrove) having ever been completed. The remaining portion which would lie in Monroe Township exists only as a concept. Residents along the proposed route have expressed concerns about the negative impact on their quality of life that the thruway will mean. Others are concerned that the bypass will mean a loss of business that the traffic on highway brings to restaurants and hotels along the current route. The primary inhibition to construction is a lack of funding for the estimated $300 million project.
The Penn Central Railroad passes through the township between Old Trail Road and the Susquehanna River, used for the delivery of coal to Sunbury Generation, a 420 MW coal-fired power plant in Shamokin Dam.
Read more about this topic: Monroe Township, Snyder County, Pennsylvania
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical terms.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)